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Officer Is Suspended After Telling Media in Ferguson: 'I Will F*cking Kill You'

UPDATED, 6 p.m. ET to reflect information from the St. Louis County Police.

A police officer has been removed from his post after he pointed his gun at a group of people documenting events in Ferguson on Tuesday night and threatened to kill them, St. Louis County Police spokesman Brian Schellman told Mashable.

"On Tuesday, August 19, 2014, shortly before midnight, an incident occurred wherein a St. Ann police officer pointed a semi-automatic assault rifle at a peaceful protestor after a verbal exchange," Schellman wrote in an email. (St. Ann is a St. Louis suburb not far from Ferguson.) "It was at this time a St. Louis County police sergeant walked over and immediately took action, forcing the officer to lower the weapon, and escorting him away from the area."

The St. Ann police officer involved in the incident has been relieved of duty and suspended indefinitely, Schellman added, satisfying a request the ACLU sent to the Missouri State Highway Patrol Wednesday afternoon requesting they do just that.

Schellman called the entire incident "inappropriate" and said it was "not indicative of the officers who have worked daily to keep the peace" in Ferguson.

In video footage posted to YouTube, a citizen journalist using live-streaming website Ustream to document the protests in real-time walks with a crowd of protesters and other media when a police officer approaches with his gun raised.

It was a chaotic scene as they tried to weed out protesters who had embedded themselves with reporters for protection. The officer, at one point, aggressively asked our reporters to turn off the lights on our cameras as the riot police formed a barricade around the area.

The initial video was shared widely on Twitter Wednesday afternoon accompanied by a hashtag: #OfficerGoFuckYourself, with some tweets containing details of an Anonymous "dox" of the officer, complete with his alleged name, age, date of birth, social security number, credit report and phone number. Someone even launched a satirical, critical Twitter account at @ofcgofuckurself.

Earlier on Wednesday, Mashable spoke with a dispatcher at the St. Ann, Missouri, police department, where the officer is rumored to have worked, who said the chief would call us back. Asked if they had gotten lots of calls about the incident, the dispatcher said, "No. You're the first one." He then laughed and said that was a joke — the phone's been ringing off the hook. We're still waiting for a call from the chief.

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